The rise and fall of Borders Reivers

It was also supposed to confirm English possession of much of what is now the Scottish Borders, but the Borders clans had been growing in strength and above all, the Douglases were not prepared to see what had previously been their land remain in English hands.

Alistair Moffat in his classic book The Borders: A History From Earliest Times states: “Unauthorised raiding of English-held land began soon after 1357 and by 1364 the Chamberlain at Berwick reported to the London Exchequer that no rents could be collected at Hawick because of the devastation caused by the Scots.

“Having abandoned their claims in Selkirkshire and Peebleshire to the Douglases and others, the English administration at Berwick concentrated its efforts on holding the more fertile and lower-lying lands of the Teviot and Tweed valleys. Control was anchored by a string of strongly defended castles from Roxburgh and Jedburgh in the west to Wark, Norham and Berwick along the river.”

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Slowly but surely the land was returned to Scottish hands, with the Earl of March retaking his land around Earlston and other clans including the Humes and Pringles playing their part in a process that took years – and which was, strictly speaking, quite illegal, though not even the Scottish monarchs would challenge the powerful Borders lords.

When David II died suddenly in Edinburgh in 1371, the crown passed to Robert Stewart, grandson of Robert the Bruce, and he probably encouraged the Borderers in their attempts to expel the English from Scotland, though of course he never put anything in writing that could be seen to breach the Treaty of Berwick.

It helped the Scottish cause that the warrior king Edward III died in 1377 and was replaced by his ten-year-old grandson Richard II, who had his own problems at home – accounts vary but there is little doubt that while aged just 14, Richard personally faced down the uprising known as the Peasants’ Revolt.

Eventually only Roxburgh and Berwick castles remained under control of English garrisons. Still a teenager, Richard II decided to give Scotland a massive show of English strength – and provoked possibly by a Douglas-led raid into Northumberland – he brought a huge army into the Borders and reached as far north as Edinburgh.

The Scots avoided battle and destroyed all sources of supply so that Richard II had no choice but to go home. On the way, he ordered that Melrose and Dryburgh abbeys be burned.

The latter institution never really recovered but Melrose Abbey was rebuilt, a process that would go on for more than 150 years. Some say Richard II suffered from a guilty conscience and paid a contribution to the cost of Melrose Abbey’s restoration.

The English garrisons at Roxburgh and Berwick were simply ignored when James, 2nd Earl of Douglas, led a Scottish army on what was nothing other than an invasion of England in 1388. With a second Scottish force attacking Carlisle, Douglas led his army deep into the Northumberland territory of his enemy, Henry Percy, known as Harry Hotspur.

The armies of Percy and Douglas met at an otherwise undistinguished place called Otterburn which gained fame because of the ballad written about the battle that ended in victory for the Scots but also the loss of Earl Douglas. Known to the English as The Ballad Of Chevy Chase, one version of the old song says this:

It fell about the Lammas tide,

When the muir-men win their hay,

The doughty Earl of Douglas rode

Into England, to catch a prey.

The dying words of Douglas were rendered as this: “My wound is deep, I fain would sleep”. The Ballad Of Chevy Chase would become arguably the most popular folk song in England for long afterwards, and confirmed the reputation of the Borderers as fighters.

The Scottish Borders were heavily involved in what was something of a civil war in the early decades of the 15th century between the Douglases and just about everyone else. It ended badly for the Douglas faction which itself split in two, the “black” and “red” Douglases.

Roxburgh Castle was still held by the English and in 1460, King James II decided to end the last remaining fortification that he did not control, Berwick having effectively been given up to England. The king was fascinated by artillery and brought a huge cannon to blast away at Roxburgh’s walls.

While standing beside the cannon, it exploded and the metal tore the king open so that he bled to death from the wound to his femoral artery. His widow, Mary of Gueldres, had their son crowned at Kelso Abbey just days later and as regent, she ordered the destruction of Roxburgh Castle.

There should have been peace then, but this was the time of the Borders Reivers, an era when lawlessness ran rife. The Reivers were basically gangs of men, usually from the same clan, who raided other families’ territories, often to rustle cattle.

They did so mostly travelling on Galloway ponies, a breed which is now extinct in Scotland. In size they were definitely more like ponies than horses, and these Galloways were hardy creatures that could cover long distances. They were often ridden hard by night, so that the Reivers could attack at dawn, their favourite time of day for a raid.

There must have been some sort of tacit agreement between the reiving clans such as the Armstrongs and Elliots, because there are few accounts of slaughter and bloodshed on these raids which lasted from the 1200s right into the 17th century.

To be a Reiver was a badge of honour for some men, and they conducted themselves much like the modern-day Mafia with its codes that lend a kind of gloss to criminality.

Not even the supposed law enforcement officials, the Wardens of the Marches, could do much to suppress the Reivers.

They became infamous and such was their legacy that centuries later when the Scottish Rugby Union was looking for a name for the new professional team that would represent the Borders after the sport became “open” in 1995, they called them the Borders Reivers. Sadly now defunct, the rugby Reivers suffered from the same problem that afflicted the original Reivers: how do you unite peoples from different areas that have long been traditional rivals?

The Reivers in the 15th and 16th centuries did not care whether it was in Scotland or England that they plundered and pillaged. They recognised no border line, and defended their own territories while raiding others. However, there was rough law followed by the Reivers and if anyone went too far on a raid they would often pay compensation to victims.

Some landowners were able to buy protection for their goods and chattels – the original blackmail – but otherwise anything that could be stolen was taken by Reivers back to their own usually humble abodes which were often temporary shelters known as sheilings.

The numbers on a raid varied greatly. A handful of men would assemble for a limited raid on a single farmer, but the big raids would see hundreds gather for a prolonged assault under the command of a leading chief.

They were armed mostly with lances and perhaps a few pistols, but they all wore the ubiquitous steel helmet – in 1971 when Flashman author George MacDonald Fraser penned his story of the Reivers, he called it The Steel Bonnets.

It helped the Reivers that the ultimate force in the land, the king, lived far away in Edinburgh and quite frankly, the Stewart monarchs seem to have been content to let the Reivers battle it out between themselves. Until the reign of James V, that is.

After a series of raids into England by the Reivers, King James was anxious to appease his uncle, King Henry VIII, and in 1529 he had a couple of leading chiefs, Adam Scott of Tushielaw and William Cockburne of Henderland, imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle and then put to death.

(Image: Getty)

The most powerful Reiver of the day was Johnny Armstrong of Gilnockie. It was said he could put a small army in the field, but when James V invited Armstrong to meet him near Hawick, Johnny took just 50 of his clan members with him. They met at Carlenrig Chapel, south of Hawick – then, despite having given his visitors a promise of safe conduct, James V’s huge army surrounded the Armstrong Reivers.

They were all executed on the spot, Johnny Armstrong hanged from a tree. Within a few years he became the stuff of legend, viewed as a hero in the Borders where he acquired the status of a Robin Hood-type figure.

If the treatment of the Armstrongs was supposed to curb the activities of the Reivers, then it failed and by the end of the 16th century their raids were increasing and becoming more dangerous, with victims killed or taken capture for ransom.

King James VI saw them as a threat to his ambition of inheriting the throne of England, though on March 24, 1603, he duly achieved that ambition when Elizabeth of England died. The now James VI & I quickly set up a commission for the pacification of the Borders, and this huge and well-armed police force spent several years hanging known Reivers and deporting thousands more to Northern Ireland as part of James’s notorious experiment, the Plantation of Ulster.

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New laws were passed which banned the carrying of firearms and the possession of Galloway ponies, and these were strictly enforced on both sides of the Border. By 1609, the commission was able to report to King James that it had “purging the Borders of all the chiefs malefactors, robbers and brigands”.

Indeed they had done so. And the following year they really did end one clan’s reiving for good when its chief, Alexander Armstrong, and a dozen of his followers were summarily executed without trial. While “mopping up” operations continued into the 1620s, it was the end of the Reivers’ way of life though their legend lives on.

One area of the western Borders proved a happy hunting ground for the Reivers for the best part of three centuries. Due to the failure of the monarchs and parliaments of Scotland and England to agree on the exact line of the Border, a small area ranging from just outside Carlisle to Gretna and east of Langholm became known as the Debatable Land, through early maps called it Liddesdale.

In his book The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between England And Scotland, historian Graham Robb gives a comprehensive and detailed account of what happened in the area, which he describes as possibly “the last and still lively remnant of the remote period when the post-Roman kingdoms of Strathclyde and Northumbria had straddled the future frontier”.

The failure to agree the line of the border put the Debatable Land into a kind of limbo – not least because the authorities on both sides of the Border decreed there should be no settlement there.

Originally left alone as grazing land, by the 15th century it had become a haven for the Reivers and was declared “outlaw” by both parliaments, which agreed: “All Englishmen and Scottishmen are and shall be free to rob, burn, spoil, slay, murder and destroy, all and every such person and persons, their bodies, property, goods and livestock… without any redress to be made for same.”

It took until 1552 and the building of the Scots Dike – some remains of which can still be seen today – to divide the Debatable Lands and finalise the Border.